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3 U.S. Judges Testify in a Death Threat Case

His words barely filling the room, the witness timidly held his hand aloft to be sworn in.

Perhaps it was because the man accused of threatening to kill him was sitting just a short distance away in the courtroom. Or perhaps, as the questioning soon suggested, this particular appearance in court was simply an uncomfortable role reversal.

“How are you employed?” a lawyer asked.

“I’m a United States circuit judge.”

The witness — Richard A. Posner, one of the most prolific members of the federal judiciary and a judge in the federal appeals court in Chicago — kicked off a highly unusual day in United States District Court in Brooklyn. He and three other sitting judges from the same court in Chicago were prosecution witnesses.

Their appearances created a stir on the second day of the second trial of Harold C. Turner, the incendiary Internet broadcaster, known as Hal, who is charged with making death threats against Judge Posner, Judge William J. Bauer and Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, after they upheld a handgun ban in Chicago.

The three judges appeared one after the other to discuss their reactions to a blog written by Mr. Turner in June, which said “these judges deserve to be killed” and included their photos and work addresses. “If they are allowed to get away with this by surviving, other judges will act the same way,” he wrote.

Judge Posner testified, “It’s obviously a threat.”

Explaining why he took the Internet posting seriously, Judge Easterbrook, the garrulous chief judge of the appeals court, cited the murders of a federal judge’s husband and mother by a man unhappy with a court ruling.

Photo

Harold C. Turner, an Internet broadcaster known as Hal, is accused of making death threats against three judges in Chicago.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

The appearance of the judges represented a shift by prosecutors. The judges did not take the stand in a trial last December that ended with a deadlocked jury; several members of the jury said the government had simply failed to present enough evidence against Mr. Turner.

The prosecution rested on Tuesday after a single day of testimony. It is unclear whether the defense will call Mr. Turner as a witness when it mounts its case on Wednesday.

Although the case originated in Chicago, it is being heard in Brooklyn so that Mr. Turner will not face trial in the building where the three appeals judges work.

The spectacle of the judges testifying attracted a full house of spectators, including other federal judges who stopped in to watch the proceeding and listen to the men expound on court procedure, judicial ethics and constitutional law. After the jury had left for lunch, defense lawyers complained to the trial judge, Donald E. Walter, that the judges were being treated differently from other witnesses.

The defense lawyers for Mr. Turner questioned the judges aggressively, interrupting their responses, at times mispronouncing their names and earning more than one scolding from Judge Walter about admonishing witnesses. The lawyers pressed the judges as to why, if they feared for their lives, none had requested security details from the United States Marshals Service and questioned whether concern about a threat had ever interfered with the judges’ work. (“I’m here today, right? I could be working,” Judge Posner quipped.)

In a strategy that seemed to surprise many in the courtroom, one lawyer, Michael Orozco, appeared to try to reargue the merits of the underlying gun rights case the judges had ruled on, which coincidentally was argued on appeal before the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday.